


Hello From the Otter Slide

by cognomen



Series: The Endless Adventures of Otter!Poe [5]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Fluff, Meeting the Parents, Multi, Otter!Poe, discussion of otter politics, otter dad is a little otter sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 07:43:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11916321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: Kes takes one look at them all together the first night and knows he’d better get used to the idea of a crowded house again. He has some time to come to terms with it - he knows a thing or two about war heroes, and about wars tending to last longer than anyone really wants. Even the winning seems to take forever. When it’s all over, he knows his boy is coming home - a hope that Kes hangs onto as fervently as he had the idea of ‘home’ the first time around.In which Poe introduces his dad to his made family, and Kes discovers he has more than he expected.





	Hello From the Otter Slide

Kes takes one look at them all together the first night and knows he’d better get used to the idea of a crowded house again. He has some time to come to terms with it - he knows a thing or two about war heroes, and about wars tending to last longer than anyone really wants. Even the winning seems to take forever. When it’s all over, he knows his boy is coming home - a hope that Kes hangs onto as fervently as he had the idea of ‘home’ the first time around.

Finn is about what Kes expects; kind eyes. Broad shoulders, a gentle touch but not a pushover. He is polite and has a good handshake. He’d come into the house a little like he was expecting some kind of drill on normality and guest etiquette to commence at any time and he is _prepared_.

Rey was the surprise. Petite and no-nonsense in a way that Kes wouldn’t have guessed is compatible with his son’s somewhat capricious nature without a little work. She comes in covered in what Kes’ expert eyes know to be otter fur - not to the point of looking less than neat, but Kes had been a happily married man for nearly nine years. He knows the signs.

It leaves him with a little pang of sadness and loss. _Shara, wherever you are, I hope you can see the happiness Poe’s finally found._ He knows he’d worried, for a little while. Poe seems to focus so much outward, always more at home in a starfighter than his own skin. As a social creature, Kes worries. _Like I can say anything._

Of course, having Shara Bey as his mother gave Poe a few advantages. Anyway, Kes is sure that even if he _wants_ to, after meeting these two orphans-of-war his son has chosen as family, Kes wouldn’t be able to find a single reason not to embrace them as if they were already his children.

Besides, he’d been sure that Poe was going to hang onto that secret until his kids were born with _fur_ , so he’s relieved to see that they already know. He sets aside his plans for having a private talk-slash-demonstration as unnecessary. That night, Kes closes the door on their sleeping forms - all three sprawled half on the bed and half on each other. Poe, for practicality or just the joy of it, is sprawled in the middle in his alternate form, their limbs flung over him.

Kes can’t help his smile at the memories of Poe as a kid - sprawled sleeping between he and Shara and kicking both of them to the extreme edges of the bed. He’d slept tempestuously as a toddler.

He’s glad to know someone else is getting paws in the face before breakfast, now.

-

“He does tell me _some_ things you know,” Kes tells the pair when they seem surprised by how informed he is.

Then he feels a little like an idiot - he knows enough about parts of their lives to know better. How are they supposed to know what a healthy relationship with a parent entails? It’s because they’re both so competent and relatively well-adjusted that he forgets. Kicking himself, Kes adds, “And you’re welcome to call me any time, too. I’m happy to listen if you need someone to, or just to talk.”

Finn beams broadly, like he’s just passed a test, and Rey looks skeptical. 

“Really?” Finn wonders. “Like - when I need ideas for Poe’s lifeday and he’s’ doing that ‘oh no, buddy, just be there’ thing?”

“That’s exactly the time to call me,” Kes says.

“We wouldn’t bother you with anything that isn’t important,” Rey says, keeping things nailed down as usual.

“I wish you would,” Kes says, trying to ease her conscience. “I’m lucky if I get an update when Poe crashes a starship.”

If he implies they’d be doing him a favor, well, they _would_ be. 

“No,” Rey says, as if it injures and affronts her that Poe has bad communication standards. 

He feels a little stab of guilt for using a known weakness of hers, but he assuages it with the knowledge that he really _does_ want her - both of them - to know they can call him anytime. To get comfortable with that idea. Everybody should have somebody like that.

“Thank you, sir,” Finn says, earnest.

Kes foresees a few early-or-late calls. Poe hasn’t really called at an unfortunate hour since he was a teenager, and Kes almost looks forward to having a little unpredictability in his life again.

“Well,” Kes says, feeling himself start to grin at the thought. “We’re family now. Poe and I are genetically predisposed to making close bonds, and I trust who he picks.”

The pair of them smile, uncertain. They look like the birds that sometimes come to the feeder by Kes’ kitchen window - the world has conditioned them to approach every offering with caution. To be wary not only the first time, but the second. The third. To treat any change in situation with wariness.

“But between the three of us, I’m glad he picked you two,” Kes says, trying to move as carefully as he does behind the glass when he sees a new bird thinking about where to land.

Finn smiles first, then Rey more slowly, and Kes is reminded of his own past in a way that both aches and eases him.

-

It’s Rey who comes to Kes first. She wakes up regularly before either of the boys, her systems attuned to some old calling that hadn’t faded as fast as Finn’s had. 

Poe never woke up early without the assistance of sirens.

She catches Kes as he sits at the breakfast table, sipping caf and gathering his thoughts for the day. She looks young, and still a little sleepy, and it wakes up his own paternal instincts.

“Caf’s on,” he calls, morning-voiced, as she passes the doorway. He’s getting used to her quiet and reserved nature - and feels a certain pride that he’d never mistaken it for timidness.

_It’s even better,_ Kes thinks, _when she sets down and just starts talking._ It reminds him - sometimes - about Shara. She had been nice to everybody, charmed everybody. But she’d only talk with you about anything real if she _liked_ you. It was how Kes has eventually figured out that she cared about him. He was her target at almost every evening meal and definitely at every unofficial victory party.

Rey sits down at the table with her cup of caf, more holding it between her hands than drinking it just yet. Kes recognizes the sweater she’s wearing as one of Poe’s.

“So,” she says, right down to business. “Poe says the transformation is genetic. Was it from you or-”

“It’s from me,” Kes assures her, guessing he expected this would happen, one day or another. “And yes, I change too.” 

Rey nods. She doesn’t even pretend that wasn’t what she was about to ask. “Into the same thing?”

“Well,” Kes does his best to make a joke of it, “he’s got his mother’s eyes, good looks, and good _hair_ , so I guess my genes had to settle for what was left...”

Rey actually smiles, lifting her cup to her mouth and taking a sip as she processes this information.

“It means that if he has children, they’ll change too,” Kes confirms.

Rey wrinkles her nose up over her mug and Kes guesses that hadn’t been why she was asking.

His curious glance earns her response. “Sorry, it’s not the transformation thing. I like Poe, no matter what. Even if he sheds on everything and takes too long in the refresher room.”

Kes is relieved, then he gets it. “It’d be a bad time to be a mother.”

“I don’t even think I’m ready to _think_ about any of that, yet. It’s just - well, I asked because I know that Poe was sort of ashamed of it when he was younger. I don’t think he wanted to tell us at first, either. I know he lost his mother young, too.”

Kes sees how Rey had been trying arrange the puzzle pieces. It’s smart. She has a lot of insight. Kes wonders if the Force gives it to her, or if it’s just her natural, thoughtful nature. Her mind working all the time at a bright, furious pace that kept the brilliant factory-fires in her eyes keen enough to illuminate whatever she was looking at.

“It takes awhile to get the hang of changing when you want to,” Kes says. “It’s biological; when you’re a kid, the change comes over at the drop of a hat. It’s supposed to protect them from - well, mostly drowning I suppose. Control comes with certain changes in your body and hormone production. It’s all a survival thing - at least, that’s the way I understood it.”

Rey nods to show she’d followed along, holding the coffee cup up in front of her face like a shield. The big sleeve openings of the sweater curl back from her strong hands, giving the illusion that they’re smaller than they are.

“But he was the only kid here who changed. When he was afraid or upset or-” Kes clears his throat and leaves off ‘horny’ in favor of the more polite, “emotional.”

“Did the others make fun of him for it?” Rey asks.

“Oh, once or twice,” Kes says. “But Poe’s likeable, and you’d be surprised what just one encounter with a pissed-off-dad-version of the transformation will do for a kid’s attitude.”

Rey actually laughs. “No, I bet it’s actually sort of scary. I believe it.”

“So after that, never within my hearing, but - here was a smart kid, good at everything he was passionate about, and he couldn’t control his own body,” Kes continues. “He could fly a starfighter on his own by eight, but when he started to cry, he changed into something else.”

Kes remembers those years. He remembers how often he’d come home to the sound of water pouring into the bathtub to cover animal howls of grief and distress. Walking into the humid cloud of the bathroom with his own heart heavy to match.

He shakes this off. “There’s fairy tales about shape-changers, where if you steal the skin of their animal form and burn it or hide it, they are trapped as humans forever. When Poe mastered his change, I thought for sure he’d do his best to burn his own skin.”

-

“Well, of course it was useful,” Kes assures Finn. “You wouldn’t believe how Stormtroopers reacted to the sight of me, teeth bared, hopping toward them menacingly.”

Rey laughs, and Finn leans forward, earnestly. “No, sir, I absolutely believe it. Poe terrified me the first time.”

Kes guesses there’s some kind of story there. He figures they’ll eventually tell him. It sounds like a 'end of a long, comfortable day’ confidence.

“Of course, I wasn’t a pilot,” Kes says.

“I need my thumbs to fly,” Poe agrees. “But it saved me a couple of times in other ways.”

“Like that time in the swamp,” Finn says.

“Or that time when you could swim into that First Order fortress through their moat and rescued us,” Rey put in.

“There were monsters in there,” Poe says, clearly embarrassed. “But I know, I’m amazing.”

“And cute,” Rey says, embarrassing him even further. 

Kes is positive that Poe’s chosen his raft well.

“See? You can use all that to your advantage,” Kes says. “Even cute.”

“You don’t have to tell him that,” Finn says, in a fond tone that makes Kes like him even more. “One flash of those big brown eyes and his silly smile and it’s belly rubs for days.”

Rey laughs. “He gets you like that too, huh?”

“Trade secret,” Poe says. “For getting twice the belly rubs.”

Kes has to wash the sudden wave of familial affection out of the back of his mouth with a long pull of beer. He’s going to miss these kids when they go back to saving the galaxy.

“Well, your secret’s out now,” Rey teases. “You’ll be on half rations.”

Poe smiles at her sweetly. “You don’t mean that.”

Finn reaches for a beer and finds the ice-chest empty. 

“There’s more in the cellar,” Kes says, getting up. “I’ll bring it up.”

“I’ll help,” Finn offers, eager. Kes is perfectly capable of retrieving two six-packs by himself, but he’d recognize the ‘I need a moment to speak to you in privacy, parental figure’ tone of voice anywhere. Dad superpower. 

“Thanks, Finn, I appreciate that,” Kes says.

They leave Rey and Poe relaxing in the evening light, safe within the insect-repellant barrier and enjoying the last of Yavin’s late-summer weather. It’s a little bittersweet for Kes, but he likes to think that, wherever she is in the Force, Shara’s some part of all of this too.

The dim lights in the kitchen remind Kes of just how long they’ve been sitting out there in the early dark. Wasting the last hours of their last visit day together.

“Well?” he asks Finn, pulling open the cellar door.

“Well,” Fin says, hesitant. He lingers at the top of the creaky old stairs and looks unsure. 

Kes stops on the third step down and looks back at him. “I hope I don’t intimidate you that much, son.”

“No, sir,” Finn says. “i mean a little, but the Pathfinders are sort of scary.”

Kes arches his eyebrows. “That was thirty years ago.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kes just waits. He’s always been patient.

“I want to thank you for this week,” Finn says, starting on safe ground. “I was just hoping you were okay with-”

Finn breaks off. Kes must _really_ be intimidating him, somehow. And Finn’s seen him hobble around on his bad hip before his morning cup of caf. _Maybe that’s what scared him._

“I’m hoping we’re what you wanted for your son,” Finn says, just an outline in the dim backlight of the kitchen. “I know it’s sort of unusual.”

Kes restrains himself from barking a laugh. Rey might make a joke like this, but Finn’s in deadly earnest.

They’re like both sides of Poe, too - bright and smart and funny, with a surprising depth and thoughtfulness to his brilliance. _I’m allowed to think that, I’m his dad._

“Finn, what I want for Poe is his happiness,” Kes reassures him. “For you all to be comfortable and complete with the people you love.”

“Oh,” Finn says.

“Yes, oh,” Kes agrees.”Now, as to what I want, well. I’ll settle for a smart, brave son-in-law who helps me carry the ice bag back to the cooler, while my daughter-in-law distract my only son in all the galaxy with threats of reduced physical affection.”

Finn is quiet, but smiling.

“A threat which neither of my boy’s partners are really capable of delivering on, if I know anything about them. Or my boy,” Kes says, continuing down the stairs. “Can you handle that, son?”

“Yes sir,” Finn says, right behind Kes. “I think we all can.”

-

What’s unexpected, as Kes watches their transport leave, carrying all three of them back to their heroics, is how much it feels like _Kes’_ family is leaving. By now, he would have thought he’d gotten used to the solitary life. Learned to live in spite of the instinctive nature of his other half - without company.

Then he realizes it _is_ his family. They’ll be back someday, victorious, and he’ll be ready. After all these years treading water, he’ll be ready to float.

-  
THE END.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure why I felt the sudden need to write some more Otter!Poe, but here we are and there it is.


End file.
